NAIC Conference Attendee Reported Missing

Chicago police say Matthew Soumakis, a 31-year-old manager of an insurance industry software support servicer, vanished from the National Association of Insurance Commissioners' Winter National...

December 13, 2005

Chicago police say Matthew Soumakis, a 31-year-old manager of an insurance industry software support servicer, vanished from the National Association of Insurance Commissioners' Winter National Meeting in Chicago. Soumakis was last seen early Tuesday walking from a bar to his hotel. His friends and family are now there searching for him.

Police say he called his mother Monday morning and was scheduled to return home on an American Airlines flight Tuesday but did not get on the plane. Friends and family came to Chicago to investigate and they say they found his bags unpacked in his hotel room. The friends say Soumakis has been married for eight months and his wife is four months pregnant.

Acting on the wishes of Soumakis' family, the NAIC on December 9 issued an alert that included a photo of Soumakis beneath a red banner with the word "MISSING" in white letters. By December 8, Chicago police were using sonar equipment to comb the Chicago River and the shoreline of Lake Michigan, while teams of divers searched the 39-degree waters that run just behind the hotel, finding nothing.

As a manager with SS&C, Soumakis may have been tracking sessions at the NAIC conference that had to do with any pending changes to company reporting requirements. The company had no comment.